


A Place in his Heart

by Revenant



Series: Icarus 'Verse [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-17
Updated: 2011-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-23 19:59:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Revenant/pseuds/Revenant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He loves her for everything she is and everything she lets him be, but the more time he spends with her, the more he misses what he doesn't have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place in his Heart

> **Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place;  
>  maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.  
>  _Handle with Care,_** Jodi Picoult

 

“Tell me a secret,” she says. They’re lying on a blue and white checked tablecloth that he spread over the floor of their room, looking up at the dark blue construction paper that Sam had fitted together like pieces of a puzzle, and dotted with splotches of white of varying sizes. It’s Valentine’s Day and they’re having a picnic under the stars, but rain had forced him to improvise.

“What kind of secret?”

“Any kind.”

He runs through the possibilities. Imagines what she’d say if he told her about the black dogs he hunted when he was a kid, how he’d tripped over his own feet because he’d just had a growth spurt and wasn’t at home in his skin yet. Wonders what she’d think if he told her about the stench of the dog’s breath, the heat of its saliva as it dripped down onto his skin and how he’d been afraid to close his eyes but did anyway because he didn’t want the dog’s face to be the last thing he saw. The gunshot had rung-out in the woods, and when he’d opened his eyes Dean was standing there, smoking gun in hand, sweat matting his hair and his eyes bright; he’d been panting a little because he’d had to race to get there. Sam wonders how she’d feel if he told her that he thinks that might have been the moment he realized he was in love with his brother.

“I miss home,” he says, instead.

“That’s not a secret.” She rolls over onto her stomach, smacks his arm lightly with one hand as she snatches a grape from the bowl he’d set out. “Everyone’s missing home a little all the time.”

“I never expected to.” She gives him that look, part squint but mostly assessing, which makes him think she’s enjoying her psychology class a little too thoroughly. He turns his head away, stares at a white blob on blue paper and notices his brush must have slipped as he painted it, that there is just the faintest white streak trailing behind it, like a shooting star. There probably isn’t any wish-power behind a painted star, but he makes one anyway, just in case.

“You never really talk about it,” she says. “About home. Or your family.”

“Nothing really to say.”

He can see her looking at him out of the corner of his eye, there’s lighthearted teasing in her gaze. “If you could describe home in one word.”

“Knock it off,” he says, when her clever fingers dig into his side and she tickles him.

“That’s three words.”

“There’s nothing to tell. My mom’s dead, my dad’s a control-freak and my brother is always travelling.”

“Come on, Sam. That might work for everyone else, but I’d like to think that after three years, I know you better.”

He met her thirteen days after school started. Just long enough for the ache to have set in; just enough time for him to get tired of curling around a pillow and pretending it was just because the mattress was thin and uncomfortable. She was an acquaintance of a friend and one day, had dropped her lunch tray down on the table beside them and settled in like she belonged there. It didn’t take long before she did.

“Jess,” he says, twists around and distracts her with a kiss. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

“Hm,” she says, then pulls back and smiles. “Fine, family is not a Valentine’s Day theme, I guess. Tell me about your first love.” She thinks she’s changing the topic.

“My first love,” Sam says, lets out a long breath. “Got me through some of the roughest moments in my life.”

“Honestly, it’s like pulling teeth!”

“It’s the past, Jess.”

“I want to know you. The past is a part of you.”

Sam started dating her because of that look. The one she’s currently fixing him with, cold determination and a stubborn streak about a mile wide. It’s something he’s faced in Dean’s eyes, and it’s about as close to home as he can get these days. He loves her for more than that, though.

He loves her because he can make an indoor picnic, complete with construction-paper sky and painted stars, and she’ll sit on the tablecloth and rifle through the picnic basket and drink cheap wine out of plastic goblets and never once mock him, even though there’s teasing alight in her blue eyes. He can hold her close at night and she’ll turn into his arms, lie still and sound and smile at him wide when she wakes in the morning with his arms still around her. Everyday she’s filling up a part of him he always wanted filled, and it’s almost enough to distract him from that space inside, that’s aching.

“I love you,” he says, leans over her and looks at her with absolute faith in his own words. “I’m sorry that I don’t talk about my past, but it’s because I want to build something new, that’s mine. There’s nothing back there that I want.”

She sighs, rests her palm against his chest. When she looks at him, it’s not bright and happy, there’s no laughter in the cornflower blue of her gaze. “Okay.”

He doesn’t push it further, knows he can only ask for so much. He thinks she knows there’s a part of him that’s lying. “I love you,” he says, and kisses her, deep and long and hot enough to change the subject. It isn’t right, and it isn’t fair, and it isn’t enough. They share a student apartment and have been together for three years, but if Sam had to describe home in one word, he knows that word will always be ‘Dean’.

\-----------  
End.


End file.
